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Genevieve Skelton received notice from Quebec late last month that her maternity benefits were cancelled “due to misrepresentation.” She was instructed to repay an amount of $41,466.

Genevieve Skelton, with her 17-month-old son Eli, has been denied maternity benefits by both the Quebec and Canadian governments and has been ordered to repay $41,000 in benefits already received. (Chris Bolin for the Toronto Star)

After leaving Quebec two days too early, a Canadian mother has found herself stuck in a bureaucratic no-man’s land with thousands of dollars worth of maternity benefits on the line.

Genevieve Skelton received notice from Quebec late last month that her maternity benefits were cancelled “due to misrepresentation.” She was instructed to repay an amount of $41,466.

Skelton admits she made a mistake by leaving Quebec a couple of days prior to her first benefit payment in October 2014 but insists the misstep wasn’t done with malice. Quebec maintains its own maternity benefit program separate from the federal government, which oversees the other provinces.

Falsely thinking she could remedy the situation, Skelton filed a backdated claim for federal maternity benefits with a plan to direct the funds to Quebec as a method of paying the province back, she told the Star. She also offered to personally cover the remaining balance resulting from the two program’s differing payouts — a whopping $13,000 — to further make the “logistical nightmare” go away.

Skelton said federal employees told her she was no longer eligible for federal maternity benefits either. The reason? She already received benefits from Quebec.

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“Every working woman who has a child in Canada deserves these benefits and why am I any different for leaving Quebec two days early? And to not get anything? It’s insane,” she said. “Yes, I left Quebec two days early as an 8 1/2-month-pregnant, scared woman and now I owe them over $41,000.

“My intention was to return to Quebec but once my son was born, my recovery was more difficult than expected, my partner and I got married . . . life changed.”

According to Quebec’s rules, a maternity benefits recipient must be a resident of Quebec at the beginning of the benefits period.

In Skelton’s case, she received her first payment on Oct. 5, 2014 but left the province by car two days earlier. The then 31-year-old had left Montreal to be closer to her partner in Saskatoon for her son’s birth. “I was nervous and alone and just wanted to be close to the father of my child,” she said.

By that time, she had lived and filed taxes in Quebec for roughly 18 months while working as a television producer.

Late Monday a spokesperson for Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said the minister was made aware of the situation on Friday and asked department officials “to re-examine the facts” related to Skelton’s case.

Meanwhile, the provincial department that oversees maternity benefits confirmed investigators found Skelton was not a resident on the day of her first benefit payment, Oct. 5, 2014.

Spokesperson Antoine Lavoie pointed to “inconsistencies” related to Skelton’s address change from Montreal to Saskatoon in March 2015 tipped investigators off, and her benefits were terminated in September 2015.

Lavoie said Skelton has 90 days to apply for an appeal of the decision.

Skelton has hired a lawyer to pursue the appeal but believes her case should have never escalated to this point.

Nora Spinks, CEO of Vanier Institute of the Family, said Skelton’s experience illustrates an unfortunate side-effect of government policies designed with an outdated family model in mind.

“Right now the assumption is you are going to live in the same place and be together all the time,” she said. “In reality that is not the case.”

Spinks explained more families are “living apart together” than ever before. This emerging class of distanced relationships occurs when couples live in different places due to factors such as work.

As a result, she argued there should be “some grey around the fringes” of government policies to accommodate modern families. She expects data collected from this year’s long-form census will “build a better case for more flexibility going forward.”

According to Spinks, if the two provinces Skelton was travelling to and from didn’t include Quebec, “there wouldn’t have been an issue.”

Quebec introduced its own maternity benefits plan called the Quebec Parental Insurance Program (QPIP) in 2006. Considered more generous than maternity leaves in the rest of Canada, Spinks said “firm lines” were drawn to prevent recipients from “double-dipping” across both Quebec and federal governments.

“I think what’s sad about this is that the family was trying to do everything right and the reality is maternity parental benefits are very complicated,” she said. “When you’re expecting a baby, all you know is that you get a year off. The details? You don’t have a clue. But it is important to know the details.”

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